With the arrival of the “information age” and the popularization of computer networks, intellectualizing and networking inside households are gradually becoming realities. Presently there are various researches on the subject of an intelligent household network. Most of these researches are based on existing computer network technologies, where different household appliances and devices are connected into a network to provide a diversity of services that are convenient, comfortable, safe and efficient to use through the network. An important subject of these researches is how to implement information exchange between the exterior and interior of a household, namely how to enable a user to manage and control interior devices of a household by using exterior devices and a highly developed network. An optimal home gateway is necessary for carrying out such management and control operations.
A home gateway is a physical interface that connects interior network of a household to exterior networks, while at the same time it is also a platform that enables a household user to receive various household services (including existing services and services that may appear in the future). A home gateway can receive communication signals from exterior networks, and pass these signals to some consumer appliances through a household network. The application of a home gateway is not limited to high-speed Internet access. In the future when broadband becomes a standard for most households, more services and contents will be made available, for example, video phones that mix video and audio information streams, interactive entertainment services such as network gaming, etc. A home gateway can execute intelligent routing algorithms, so as to distribute information streams (data) to different devices such as telephones, intelligent electrical appliances, digital TVs and audios, etc. For example, an advanced home gateway can send a phone call to one particular phone in a household based on the caller's ID, so that a phone call for the children will be sent to their room, or phone calls (besides urgent calls) can only be sent to places that are far away from the bed room after 10 PM in the night.
Existing home gateways generally support Internet access as well as intelligent household appliances control, but still have the following shortcomings: Firstly, when a user is controlling an intelligent household appliance through an exterior communication network, the control scheme utilized is to directly control the specific household device. If there are a relatively greater number of devices in the household, this control scheme will increase the operational complexity and manufacturing cost of the home gateway. Secondly, it is hard to effectively isolate information when Internet access signals of a computer and control signals of intelligent household appliances are both entering a home gateway, hence creating security risks such as illegal users outside a house using the Internet to control intelligent household appliances inside the house or to conduct destructive operations, thus causing property loss and psychological harm to the user. Finally, when control signals of an interior intelligent appliance are entering a home gateway, the home gateway may not be able to effectively distinguish between Internet access signals and household appliance control signals, thus causing Internet access interruption or errors in control information.